That was... uh... wow, that... I... um... hold on, I need a moment...

That was an experience and a half. At first I thought this was just a story where a child's dad died and she was too innocent to realize. Then everything after that bit happened, and now I'm... both more knowledgeable on what's going on and more confused. 

I fucking love it. 

The aesthetic of this is maddening. The mix of this 1950's pulpy family time artwork with this strange, surreal... that it's being used to depict is fascinating. The music is bewildering, intoxicating, and even a little unnerving. The reveal around halfway through is a darn informative one that recontextualizes a lot of what's going on... I think. I'm still not sure, honestly. That reveal admittedly felt like it was meant to be a powerful reveal for the player moreso than for the character, since the character is given so little... well, characterization. On one hand, I want to say that such a decision doesn't really count as an anagnorisis from my understanding, but that twist genuinely shocked me and made me rethink what was going on with almost no buildup, so I don't care. 

In the words of someone on Twitter talking about a different developer entirely, "Unlike me, please SquishypuffDave, please miss just fucking once." 
(To clarify on what this someone on Twitter is that I'm referring to so I don't look like a rambling madman: https://twitter.com/Civvie11/status/1444002012459323392 )

Great work, man. You've done it again.

I love the aesthetics. The character is rigged very nicely, especially the way the man slithers out from the well. The choice of music also fits very well with the aesthetic, and (this might me just my imagination) the fact that the music progresses after you regressed is a nice touch.

The game is also very clever in how it sidesteps the no-text restriction. I didn't think that a game with dialogue would even be possible under the constraints, but you've proven me wrong. Very nice work.

The story is one thing I'm not completely sure about. I appreciate the twist involving the baby girl and how it's set up. The first scene raised so many questions, including: "why is the father not here?", "why is the mother crying?", and "why is the only thing interactive is a picture of a man drinking orange juice?", all of which points to the father being the villain, or so I thought. The ending, however, didn't really explain the origin of the man or the significance of the burning books. Perhaps a large part of it is left surreal, which I don't have a problem about. But if that's not the case, I'm very curious to know what I missed.

This has excellent art direction. The old picture book and paper doll style (with white paper creases and everything!) appeals to me quite a bit. Much like you with my game, I had to play this twice to try and understand what was going on - but I think I might have gotten the basic twist the first time because of the very last shot. It's just that the events were so surreal that they had me thinking I was missing something (read: a lot). As far as anagnorisis goes, does it recontextualize the rest of the story? I don't know. It seems like the new context is something you could've already intuited from the visual style alone. Though maybe that's part of the foreshadowing. (Or I'm misunderstanding, like, everything.)

I think what I liked best in terms of ludonarrative was the scribbled-out dialogue. That's because even though you don't know what's being said, that's not what's important about it. What is important is what it conveys about the situation, mood and in particular the narrative arc, which is achieved via things like context and music choices. I like how these things allow the player to infer for themselves whats being said, even if there's still some mystery. Very well done.

I hope the boy stuck on the ceiling is a reference to Roald Dahl's "The Twits".  I didn't notice until the second playthrough  just how creepy and robotic his laugh was. (Just like how I didn't notice the lying down half-face in the cover image until I was rating the game. Was that always there? O.o)

Fantastic job!